


Make This Place a Home

by crna_macka



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: F/F, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 17:34:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7447984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crna_macka/pseuds/crna_macka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Concepts like "home" and "family" don't rest easy in Wynonna's understanding. People like Waverly and Nicole help, though.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make This Place a Home

**Author's Note:**

> July reward for KS, who likes the Earps/Haught love triangle. Started as a meditation on Wynonna's sleeping arrangements.

Wynonna decides to reclaim the old homestead as summer begins to fade. Waverly agrees to move in and does her best to make the “home” aspect a reality again, bit by bit. She’s used to making the best of things; Wynonna is used to just making do. So while Waverly claims a proper bedroom upstairs, Wynonna looks at her options - Willa’s old room, untouched; the master bedroom in nauseating disarray - and defaults to the couch.

Waverly argues: that’s the living room, it’ll get cold up against the outside wall, Wynonna won’t have any privacy, the front door is _right there_.

“Waves, I can’t remember the last time I had my own room. I’m pretty sure all that quiet would keep me up.” Besides, she doesn’t say, there are ghosts upstairs. Fine if Waverly wants to sleep there, but Wynonna has seventy-odd actual demons to send back to hell. She doesn’t have time to deal with metaphorical ones of her own, too. The nightmares she has on the couch cost her enough sleep as it is.

Waverly is persistent, though. Slowly but surely, she transforms the interior. Boxes arrive from Amazon, and Champ helps unload gently used furniture off the back of the truck. The gloom that had settled in the house during Ward’s final years of neglect crumbles away and Wynonna agrees, finally, to make it more obvious that she’s planning to stay. 

* * *

Wynonna is standing at the foot of the stairs, hands on her hips and glaring at the mess of dismantled furniture on the floor, when Nicole walks in. The woman has dressed down in old jeans and a t-shirt for the work she expects to be doing today; Wynonna’s been at it long enough and drinking just enough that she’s switched to a ratty old tank and gym shorts for extra ventilation.

“‘Some assembly required,’ my ass,” she says. “I remember shop class being a hell of a lot easier.”

“You took wood shop?” Nicole asks, surprised. Purgatory is rural, for sure, but she somehow can’t imagine a teenage Wynonna taking a trade elective.

“I mean, I didn’t ace it or anything,” the elder Earp grumbles. “But I know a Phillips from a flathead.”

Under her breath, she adds, “Okay, so I also got kicked out when we started using table saws, but still.”

Nicole suppresses a smile, because while it’s _so_ Wynonna, it’s kind of sad, too. But she doesn’t say so, just joins the other woman in the doorway. “So what’s this?”

“A bed.” Wynonna’s voice cuts with frustration and disdain. “Can’t you tell?”

“Ahh.” The pieces on the floor _are_ vaguely bed-like. They could be a bed when assembled. Or a coffee table. It’s hard to tell with the room in a state of general chaos, looking like a thorough B &E with some particularly gentle property damage. Nicole snorts at the thought and Wynonna’s elbow swings into her side. 

* * *

Sitting side-by-side, propped by pillows against the headboard, Nicole is struck by just how purposeful Wynonna’s choice of sleeping arrangements is. To test the idea, she asks, “Planning to install any actual doors here?”

“Nah,” Wynonna says with a shrug. “What, don’t like my curtains? I let Waverly pick out the fabric.”

The bedroom is barely an upgrade from the couch. There is little privacy with one of the open doorways at the intersection of the entry room, kitchen, and base of the stairs. The shutters on the window to the living room might as well be for show. Nicole can see straight to the front door and keep the stairs on the edge of her vision, and it doesn’t take a full one-eighty to monitor the back of the house either. All from the bed. 

Nicole knows people that won’t sit with their backs to a room, who feel the need to know where the exits are, and who reflexively scan their surroundings for weapons, makeshift or otherwise. Wynonna’s thinly disguised guard station in her own childhood home is something else. Something that makes the muscle in Nicole’s chest seize with admiration and concern. She understands paranoia and she knows the family’s troubled history, but she can’t wrap her head around what makes the Earps think that living like this is okay.

Wynonna pushes an open bottle into her hand. “Don’t go all silent and serious like that. A girl likes a little feedback in bed, you know.”

“Really,” Nicole says without thinking. “Can’t imagine that’s a problem--”

The front door opens with a wave of cool evening air. Waverly herself, cheeks flushed and hair tousled by the wind. Wynonna leans forward to see around Nicole and sketches a salute. “Hey, baby girl. Tell me that’s pizza I smell.”

“--for you,” Nicole finishes under her breath and tips the bottle toward her mouth.

* * *

Wynonna sleeps less than ever after bringing Willa home. Waverly knows this because when she sneaks back in after midnight but before dawn, Wynonna isn’t even in her room. She’s lounging in the dark near the barely smoldering wood stove, her eyes obviously red and dead even in just the porchlight that sneaks through the blinds. At least one bottle glints at the foot of her chair.

“Christ, Wynonna!” Waverly hisses, angry at being startled by her sister lurking even though she’s had months to get used to it. She tells herself it’s just spookier now. One sister returned from the grave and the other fading out of Waverly’s life yet again. She hates that Wynonna defers to Willa, and she’s annoyed at herself for being bitter about it. All that frustration boiling to the surface as she throws her jacket on the couch and stalks over to clean up the mess that is Wynonna.

“You’re worse than Daddy,” she snaps, and Wynonna snorts in disagreement.

“What would you know. You were six.”

Waverly gives up on trying to collect bottles or glasses in the dark and collects her sister instead. “I know more than you think. And then some.” For instance, she knows that Wynonna doesn’t need any help getting up or making it to the bedroom, but sometimes a shoulder to lean on is the only thing that helps lighten the emotional load. She knows that the way Willa talks isn’t just from being brainwashed by a cult; it’s designed to cut, and Wynonna is far too used to taking the brunt of undeserved punishments.

Angry, she pushes Wynonna onto the bed, and trying to hide the emotion, she stoops to take off her sister’s boots.

“You’re a good kid,” Wynonna mumbles. Her long fingers tease at Waverly’s hair, not heavy-handed but only reminiscent of the way she would usually comb it back. “Sweet girl. I had to make sure you got in okay.”

“I’m surprised you even noticed I was gone,” Waverly lets slip. It’s petty, but not untrue. 

“I checked,” Wynonna says, as though this is nothing more than their usual banter. Or so it seems until she adds, “I might not be the heir, but I’ll still do anything to keep you safe.”

There’s a stone lodged in Waverly’s throat, and she can’t swallow it down. She loosens her own boots and pushes them off as Wynonna swings her legs up onto the bed. And Wynonna is definitely more alert than her weary voice makes her seem, because she picks up on the soft thump of Waverly’s shoes against the floor. “You staying?”

“Yeah,” Waverly says simply. She’s five, six years old again and climbing into her sister’s bed, tucking herself in front so Wynonna has something to hold onto. “For a little bit, at least.”

* * *

They’re dating. Waverly and Nicole. Of course they’re dating, Wynonna tells herself. Of course. That’s _great_. And she barely has twenty-four hours to wrap her head around it before something gets into Waverly - something _literally_ gets into Waverly - and they’ve got to lock her up. Doc puts salt around her cell and swears up and down, he’s just going to be gone a couple days, he knows a fella up in the mountains who can help, they’ll fix this. 

Wynonna can feel her ribs caving in when he walks out and just like that, she’s lost two more - four members of her family gone in just two days. She can’t even think about going back to that empty house in the empty hills. That big wooden coffin, just waiting for her to lie in it alone. She can’t.

“Nonna?” Nicole’s voice is soft and her hands are gentle, pulling Wynonna out of her head, back to the fluorescent lights of the police station. Her eyes are stinging and she tries to wipe at them, but Nicole gets there first.

“I can’t,” is all Wynonna manages as she tries to turn away from the touch.

“I’ll set up a couple cots in the break room. We can stay here - with her - overnight. Nedley won’t mind.”

“Fuck Nedley,” Wynonna hiccups.

Nicole’s small smile isn’t condescending. She secures Wynonna in a tight hug, giving her a chance to gather herself in safety.

“We’ll get her back,” Nicole says. “And Henry. And Dolls. We’ll get ’em.”

Wynonna nods and takes a breath. And another. And another. She steps out of Nicole’s embrace and bites her lip. Nicole’s hand stays on her arm, though, the other woman reluctant to completely let go. Jesus, Wynonna can’t even look her in the eye - there’s something a little too earnest, a little too guileless waiting for her there.

But she doesn’t shake off the connection.

When it breaks to allow them to set up the bedding and settle into the sleepless dark, she doesn’t protest at how close Nicole arranges the pallets. There is still space between them through the long hours of night, and in that space Nicole’s fingers tangle with her own, grounding Wynonna despite the burgeoning void.


End file.
